‘Do you like U2?’
They were a favourite, one of the few passions he shared with Matthew. ‘I think I have every album,’ he announced proudly.
‘They’re alright.’ She sounded uncertain. Then with a derisive sniff, ‘But that Bono is a sanctimonious cunt. He makes me want to hate them.’ She was flicking through her purse and she placed a cigarette to her lips.
‘This is a non-smoking car.’
‘I thought you lot were all anarchists?’
‘I’m not part of that lot and I don’t want you to smoke in the car.’
She made a face, but returned the cigarette to its packet. Her fingers started tapping on the dashboard. ‘How come I’ve never met you before?’
‘Leo and I haven’t seen each other for a while.’
‘What’s a while?’
‘Eleven years.’
‘Fuck!’ There was awe as well as shock in her exclamation. ‘You must be feeling awful.’
She was right. Probably not in the way she thought, but she was right nonetheless. He did feel awful. He was furious at himself. He had been cold and unfeeling for days and this was not the moment to experience the sting of tears in his eyes. He did not dare look at her.
‘I’m sorry.’ For the first time her voice had lost its brazen inflection. It sounded young and frightened.
He did turn to her. She was looking out of the window at the lush landscape falling away from them. She continued to speak in that shy, childlike tone. ‘I loved Leo. He was amazing, wonderful. But he could be so mean.’
She followed him confidently into the pub, as if they had known each other for years. The Demons Creek Hotel was a three-storey Victorian building with an ugly, box-like extension attached to the side of it which functioned as a bottleshop. It was blessedly cool inside the double-bricked walls of the building.
All heads turned to look at them as they walked into the bar, then just as quickly everyone went back to contemplating their drinks. It was far from crowded. A few tradesmen who’d just knocked off work, two ferals with dreads, some elderly National Party types propped up on stools at the bar. The pub catered with egalitarian ease to the long-established farmers, to the hippies and children of hippies who had laid claim to the hills over the past three decades, and also to the constant stream of local and international tourists who passed through on their way south to Byron Bay. The locals obviously assumed that Anna and Saverio were part of the latter group. No eyebrow was raised at Anna’s aggressively urban attire. Saverio was conscious that if their entry had aroused any suspicions, they would have had to do with what a middle-aged man like him was doing in the company of such a young woman. She’s my brother’s goddaughter, he wanted to call out. She’s got nothing to do with me. Instead he asked her if she wanted a beer and she said yes.
The three elderly blokes at the bar fell silent as he approached. He nodded to them and received a gruff ‘g’day’ in response. They all had wrinkled ruddy skin and thin wisps of silver-yellow hair, and all wore open-necked white shirts that accentuated the burnt V of their necks.
Saverio looked around the bar as he waited for the beers. He wondered if his brother had spent much time there; he couldn’t really imagine Leo discussing Marxism with the farmers or anonymous gay sex with the hippies. He took a glass in each hand, nodded again to the old men, and found Anna at the rear of the pub.
As part of the extensions a small square dance area had been constructed against the back wall. On three sides mirrors ran from floor to ceiling reflecting the bar beyond. Anna was gazing at her reflection. A mirror ball hung from the ceiling. Some of the shingles of glass were missing.
‘I guess this is where you come if you want to go clubbing.’ She laughed again, a deep resonant sound that came all the way up from her belly. ‘I can see Leo here, he loved a bit of a dance.’ She put on an accent, Leo at his most queenie, cruelly caricaturing other gay men. ‘They’re playing “I Will Survive”, Brooce! They’re playing “I Will Survive”!’ She was wiggling in such a close approximation of Leo’s stilted dancing style that Saverio couldn’t help laughing.
Anna took the beer and indicated a door with a handwritten sign taped to it: To the beer garden. ‘Am I allowed to smoke out there?’
I’m not your father, he almost snapped at her. Instead he opened the door for her and followed her out to the courtyard.
It was a stunning view. The gently sloping yard was immaculately mowed, with tall grey-limbed gum trees throwing shade over the tables and chairs set around the lawn. There were no fences and the ground disappeared abruptly to give way to the jutting tops of thick forest trees. Beyond the greenery and as far as the eye could see was the curve of the mighty Pacific Ocean.
The garden was empty except for a blonde woman sitting on a bench at the end of the lawn, looking out over the view. She did not turn at the sound of their voices.
‘So why did you and Leo stop talking to each other?’
He wished he had said nothing to her in the car. Tomorrow was the funeral and after that he would return to Melbourne. Then it would all be over.
He took a mouthful of beer. ‘It really doesn’t matter now.’
She was searching his face again, her eyes inquisitive and excited. She drew ravenously on her cigarette. ‘Your father was a fascist, wasn’t he?’
He banged the beer glass on the table. ‘That’s nonsense. Did Leo tell you that?’
Anna was not at all perturbed. ‘Yep. He said that your father supported Mussolini. .’
‘My father did not support Mussolini!’ Saverio drew breath and looked out at the view. She was a child; she wasn’t to blame. ‘My father hated the Blackshirts, thought them thugs and criminals, but he respected some of what Mussolini was able to achieve for Italy and for poor people in Italy. He was not alone in that. Millions of Italian peasants were in agreement.’
‘He did beat your mother, though, didn’t he?’
And how the fuck is that your business? Saverio looked out to the horizon again. The sky and sea offered no assistance. The setting sun still had heat in it and he wished he had remembered his sunglasses.
‘I think Leo might have exaggerated some of what occurred.’ It was impossible to explain further. Yes, their father had hit their mother, not very often, never bashed her; but yes, he had hit her, three, possibly four times that Saverio could recall, in front of him and Leo, smacks and slaps, always out of exasperation, driven almost unhinged by her whining, her hypochondria, her almost bovine passivity. How to explain any of this to a young woman coming into adulthood at the dawn of this digital century? How to explain the behaviour of men and women from the end of a feudal millennium?
‘If he wasn’t so bad, why did Leo hate him so much?’
That question was so childish; as if there were any easy answers to it. Because Leo was unforgiving. Because Leo was stubborn. Because Leo was selfish. Because Leo relied upon their mother’s support and when she died he felt betrayed. Because mothers always favoured the gay son. All of this was true, but to say any of it was to lead into an argument.
He wished she hadn’t come with him. He had wanted to forget Leo for a few hours, and her presence and her questions couldn’t help but remind him of the duties he faced the following day. He couldn’t do it; he just wasn’t up to it. He would say so to Julian, and Julian would understand. I can’t give a eulogy. I have nothing to say. I can’t say what I want to say. I can’t say that Leo was the kind of man who wouldn’t go and visit his dying father, the kind of man who didn’t have it in him to ask after his niece and nephew. The rage seemed to flood through him, threatened to drown him. The heat, the humidity, the thickness of it, like a blanket over the world, was exhausting.